


now i'm covered in you

by leahdaisies



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Getting Back Together, Post-Break Up, Relationship Study, colour soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29968428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leahdaisies/pseuds/leahdaisies
Summary: A soulmate is yourperson, a person who can take away the grey and send the colours flooding in, a person who knows you better than all others.Sometimes, though, that can be more of a curse than a blessing, because someone who knows all your weak points knows exactly where to cut.And sometimes, you're left to wonder - was the world better off grey, after all?(Or: a Hunter/Bobbi relationship study in the Colour Soulmate trope.)
Relationships: Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse
Kudos: 12





	now i'm covered in you

**Author's Note:**

> A dear friend asked for help in a certain challenge, and, well, Lily, if anyone's a cure to writer's block, it's you. Love you to the moon and back, and may we beat this madness after all!! 
> 
> <33

Soulmates, Bobbi had always thought, were the universe's cruel trick. 

She had been seven years old when she had first heard the word _colour_ \- her mother had said it, in that rushed, we're-already-late kind of tone that meant she hadn't calculated this beforehand: "just grab that green lunchbox, Barb." 

She could still remember the weight of the furrow that had etched itself into her brow. "Green, Mama?" 

She hadn't known that word, hadn't known that it was supposed to represent… something. 

"None of the lunchboxes have the word _g-r-e-e-n -"_ she still remembered sounding it out, _oh_ so carefully and oh so eager to please with her shiny new spelling bee prize - "written on them." 

Her mother had paused, half-way into hurriedly shoving whatever snacks she could into a travel bag, and given Bobbi a long, weighted look. 

She still remembered how her mother's hair had messily framed her face, her frazzled-looking eyes - and how that rush of frantic energy had slowly faded out of them as she raised her gaze to the clock. 

"We're late anyway," she had said to herself, an expression that was a mixture of resignation and something Bobbi couldn't name entering her eyes. 

(Later, she would realise it had been _nostalgia.)_

"Come sit with me, Barb," she had beckoned, patting the well-worn place on the kitchen chair beside her. 

That was the first time Bobbi heard about _s-o-u-l-m-a-t-e-s._

Soulmates, her mother explained, were people made just for you. People who could make the grey go away. 

"The grey can go _away?"_ Bobbi had breathed, eyes rounding with childlike wonder. 

“Sometimes,” her mother had explained, “if you’re very lucky, you get to meet that person. And when you do, all the grey rushes away, and it’s just… happiness, they say. Brighter and more vivid than anything you’ve ever seen.” 

There was something bittersweet in the twist of her mouth, though, and even at seven, Bobbi had caught it. 

“You can see the not-greys, can’t you, Mama?” she had asked, her nose squinching as she tried to understand.

Her mother had smiled faintly. “Oh, yes. I can see colours, sweetie.” 

She remembered her next question as vividly as the shadow that had instantly fallen across her mother’s face. “Can Daddy see the co-lours, Mama?” 

“He can,” her mother had confirmed, her voice turning to terse. Standing up, she had resumed her packing, her movements sharp and unusually jerky, for her.

But her seven-year-old self, still trying to understand, had persisted, tugging at her mother’s pant leg. “If Daddy can see the co-lours, and it’s so wonderful, why isn’t he here with you?” 

Her mother’s mouth had tightened, and she had remained quite still in her place for a lingering moment. Then, with a smile so obviously forced that Bobbi had taken an involuntary step back, she had replied, “You see, sweetheart, sometimes the colours aren’t so great, after all. Sometimes, they’re just too bright, and too screamingly overpowering that… that it destroys everything special about them.” 

Even then, Bobbi had gotten the distinct idea that her mother hadn’t just been talking about colours.

She hadn’t had a clue what she _did_ mean, though.

But now… oh, _now._

Now, she wished she was still so young and uncomprehending. 

_Too bright, too screamingly overpowering -_ Bobbi thought that truer words had never been spoken. For her and Hunter’s relationship, at any rate. 

Everyone always romanticised how beautiful it had to be to have someone who knew you completely, wholly, and loved you despite every imperfection and every flaw. Maybe that even was true, for some lucky people.

But what they didn’t tell you, what no-one ever told you, was that it could be turned right back on you.

When someone who knew you completely and wholly, who knew how to find every weakness and vulnerable spot, turned their words to hurt you? It was the surest pain you would ever feel.

What made it even worse was that the bond didn’t go away. The colours didn’t fade; always staying there at the edges of her vision, ever-present, mocking her with a brightness she couldn’t hold in her arms anymore.

It pulled them back together, no matter how sharp their anger, because it had to. 

_That_ was the universe’s cruel trick - giving you a person that was perfectly suited to love you, but also perfectly suited to hurt you, and fixing it up so that you returned to each other, over and over again, in a never-ending dance of ever-brightening rainbow colours. 

At moments like these, when she was pacing up and down her empty apartment with her hands in her hair, bunched up in frustration, she couldn’t help but relive their first meeting.

They had been so happy, then, and she wished she could forget it, lose sight of the joy they had once shared -

_“Excuse me, ma’am, do you happen to know where I could find the general library?”_

_Bobbi lowered the SHIELD-modified binoculars she was holding to her eyes, gritting her teeth. Two minutes away from catching her target, and some idiot - an accented idiot, no less - had to come interrupt her, asking for directions to the library, of all things._

_But she couldn’t blow her cover, not for this one. She would just have to trust that Iz would have her back on this._

_Not quite prepared to turn around, though, she gestured to her left without shifting her gaze off the Outer Banks. “Down that street, take the first turning to your left, carry on straight for three crossings, then it’ll be on your right, next to the big corporate-type place.”_

_He was supposed to have buggered off and followed her directions, then - but instead, he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, thanking her in that maddeningly polite way that Brits had._

_Really, she thought, now was not the time for British manners._

_Except that… something was wrong. Not with the manners (unfortunately) but with… with her shoulder._

_A tingle was the best way she could think to describe it, and Barbara Morse had been against rom-coms since she had watched her parents storm out on each other more times than she could count._

_This tingle spread slowly from her shoulder down her arm, and when she turned to glare at it, half-incredulous and half-furious, her entire world ground to a halt._

_There was… her arm was…_

_**Colour.** _

_She had never seen a single colour other than black, white or grey before, but she knew instinctively that that was what this… difference on her sleeve was._

_She didn’t have the word to name it, but it was lighter than the blacks she knew, and darker than -_

_That was her hair, she realised with a powerful jolt._

_So that was golden?_

_She hadn’t even realised she had let out a shaky laugh until the man beside her did the same, rubbing his hand over his face in awe._

_“Colour,” they said at almost exactly the same time, then laughed, also in near-perfect synchrony._

_And for the first and only time in her life, Bobbi Morse forgot completely about her mission._

_Spinning in a slow circle on her heel, she watched, breathless, as more colours expanded from the centrepoint where they stood together, filling in everything around them with more hues and shades than she had even dreamed was possible._

_It was like a dazzling storm, and they were in its eye, turning this way and that and round each other to watch it all grow and brighten._

_In the midst of it all, the man turned to her, his eyes - the same colour as the leather jacket she was wearing, she noticed with a little thrill of deep happiness - alight with the same profound joy she felt coursing through her soul._

_“Dance with me?” he asked, holding out his hand._

_And in any other situation, Bobbi - SHIELD Agent Bobbi, the Mockingbird, holder of a picture-perfect memory and the highest Academy pass rating since Melinda May - would have replied with a definitive no._

_But today, she took his hand, and he spun her close, sweeping her against him and around, around, around._

_They whirled there, together beneath the stars, with a storm of fiery colour unfurling across the moonlit water all around them._

\- It hovered there, always just out of her reach, but always just close enough that she thought she could finally grasp it back in the next circle of their dance. 

Much as she tried, though, she could never quite -

Her phone rang, sharp and piercingly loud in the emptiness of her apartment. 

Her stomach clenched, and at the same time, the bright colour of the photograph in front of her flickered dangerously close to grey. 

Bobbi’s heart froze, and she lunged for the phone. 

“Ms Morse?” the voice on the other end asked, tinny and unfamiliar. 

“That’s me,” she replied in the calmest voice she could muster.

“You’re listed as the emergency contact of one Mr Lance Hunter, is that correct?” 

It was dispassionate, cool, but Bobbi had never felt a more fiercely burning panic than what surged through her body now, in time with the rhythmic _fade in, fade out_ of the colours around her.

“That’s right,” she managed to wrench out. 

How she made it to the hospital, she would never know - but she would likewise never forget the moment she had seen Hunter’s face, and it had been ashy and pale. Grey.

_No._

_No, no, no, no, no -_

Her heartbeat pounding in her ears, Bobbi rushed across the hospital room and threw herself onto the chair next to his bed, grabbing for his hands with fingers that were trembling so much it took her three tries to properly grip his fingers.

He couldn’t be gone, he _couldn’t._ Because much as she hated him, much as she could hurt him, much as he could hurt her - she would always love him far, far more than any of it. 

That was the ultimate truth of them, she realised, then. _She would always love him far more than they hurt each other._

Her breath shaking and her heart hammering, Bobbi grasped his hand.

And after the longest minute of her life, Hunter gave a low groan and opened his eyes. 

_Brown_ \- the same warm brown that she would love for the rest of her life, whether she sometimes wished she could leave him behind, or not.

The colours flooded back all around her, and she could breathe again. 

Maybe soulmates _were_ the universe's cruel trick. 

But maybe they were its gift, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Any and all feedback is tremendously appreciated <3


End file.
